The Moonshawl: A Wraeththu Mythos Novel (38 page)

I passed beyond the domestic
areas, out into the main hall of the house. A lamp was lit upon a table by the
door, emitting a soft orange glow. Boots were thrown in a heap around the table
legs; gloves lay upon its surface like empty hands. I imagined boisterous
Whitemanes shedding their outer clothing here, bringing in a scent of rain or
snow or new mown hay.

Nohar stirred. Was this
unnatural or simply because the Whitemanes were, amongst themselves, at peace,
unconcerned about intrusion?

And then I was climbing, drawn
towards the rear east wing of the house, drawn on by that skein of music. The
stairs were grand at first, sweeping up from the ground floor, but then, above
the first floor became narrow like the attic stairs of Meadow Mynd. I saw
nohar, nohar living, although sometimes ghosts stopped to stare, or perhaps
people in other eras who believed they could see a ghost.

I came to the tower door, and
now the music seemed to come from all directions. I knew the tune, yet I’d not
heard it before. A heavy scent fingered its way around me, redolent of summer
gardens and flowers that bloom by night. I was like the prince in a fairy tale,
slipping through an enchanted slumbering palace, up the tight winding stair to
a room with a spinning wheel and a sleeping princess.

Mossamber would be waiting for
me, I was sure. This is what I expected. He would live here in his shrine,
surrounded by his memories and perhaps – as Rinawne had suggested – Peredur
might lie enshrined in a glass tomb. Whatever I found, this was the only place
I must be – the ‘next’ I’d known would come.

The tower was similar to my own
except that it comprised only two floors and was smaller in circumference. The
music became louder still as I climbed the stair. I had no doubt that it was
real. I opened the first door I came to and emerged into a room with bare
floorboards, except for a wide faded rug upon which stood the piano. Owl light
from the sinking moon flooded the room through tall windows that overlooked the
lawn. I couldn’t yet see who was playing the piano, as they were hidden by a
large music stand, but the melody flowed effortlessly, like water. I drew
closer slowly, taking in further details of the room, the patchy walls, an
immense gilt-framed mirror that was dappled with dark silvery blots, a sway-backed
sofa draped with fringed shawls before a gigantic cold fireplace. A table
between the two windows held a china jug of white lilies, petals fallen on the
wood; their voluptuous aroma filled the air.

The music stopped.

I sensed the musician pause,
aware he was not alone. I sensed trepidation, but also relief. I thought for a
brief moment,
Nytethorne.

Then the har at the piano rose,
up like a pale ghost, hair around him in a moonshawl. He had stones for eyes.
It was Peredur.

For several breathless moments I stared at him and
he stared back with those sightless orbs, yet I had no doubt some part of him
could see me well enough. Had I known this, suspected it? Yet perhaps I
shouldn’t be surprised. Who else would I find in this enchanted room? ‘Don’t be
afraid,’ I said softly, ‘I’m not here to hurt you.’

He came out from behind the
piano, moving surely, his slender body erect. ‘I know,’ he said. His voice, of
course, was beautiful, as he had been, or perhaps still was. I saw no horror
before me, only this ethereal, surreal figure, with that abundant platinum
hair, his features somewhat ascetic. He was Wyva viewed through a strange glass.
‘I must say also, don’t be afraid,’ he continued. ‘You’re no shock to me, Ysobi
har Jesith. You’re only here because I allow it.’

‘Am I the first?’ I asked,
needing a point from where to proceed.

‘Rey saw me, if that’s what
you’re asking,’ he replied. ‘Nohar else, beyond these walls.’

‘But why...? Why keep yourself
hidden, letting everyhar believe Mossamber killed you? Did you want to
perpetuate the idea of a curse?’

He grimaced. ‘The
idea
?
Have you learned so little, Ysobi?’ He came close to me now and in the meagre
light I saw the scars upon his face, very faint. His skin was white, otherwise
flawless but for those traces like claw marks, down his eyelids and cheeks. His
lips were likewise pale, the same shape as Wyva’s. Those stones that glowed
where his eyes should be seemed to gaze right into me. Were they only stones? He
wore a loose white shirt that hung off one shoulder, cream linen trousers, no
shoes.

‘What do you want of me?’ I
asked.

‘For you to stop being a pest,’
he said. ‘Leave it be. I know you won’t until you’ve ferreted every last morsel
off the bone, so here I am. Now, be satisfied, and leave it be.’

‘If you know me so well, then
you also know I won’t do that.’

He sighed. ‘Even Rey had the
grace to give up before you did. He’d be dead if he hadn’t. He meddled too,
through the
best
of intentions. It’s not just
me,
you understand.
You think you can come here and somehow heal everything?’ He uttered a cold
laugh. ‘Impossible. If you care so much for the harling, steal him away, ride
fast. She’ll have him otherwise.’

‘Vivi,’ I said. ‘Is that who you
mean?’

He stood perfectly still, only
his mouth moving. ‘Who else? You’ve learned that much.’

‘Why can’t you stop her? What
hold has she over you?’

‘None. We are simply of the same
fabric. She wants to be loose, but I won’t let her. That is my only control.’

‘So you hide here, denying
yourself a life, but also denying her freedom.’

He smiled coldly. ‘Well done,
you get it. Part of it at least.’

‘But Vivi, unlike you, is dead.’

Peredur exhaled through his nose
impatiently. ‘Nothing dies here. The land is a storehouse. Oh, we cursed each
other well enough, she and I. We were bound from the moment she decided to
dismantle me. As she took from me, so I took from her, not least the ability to
move on. So she’s my curse and I am hers. There are curses everywhere, to go
with all the others uttered over the millennia in this land. Gods and heroes,
goddesses and witches, all set free now the world is new again.’

‘It must be possible to end this
particular curse,’ I said.

‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you?’
Peredur sauntered to the sofa, his only betrayal of blindness the minnow quick
reach with a hand to touch it. ‘Sit with me,’ he said. ‘Let me taste across the
air between us what has Nytethorne in such a bother.’

I sat down, conscious of the
flush across my face, glad he couldn’t see it. ‘I’m not the first in that
respect either, am I?’ I couldn’t help saying.

Peredur put his head to one
side, a coquettish gesture that teetered dangerously close to being grotesque.
Somehow, he managed to get away with it. ‘So you’re as afflicted too,’ he said.
‘Jealous? Worried you can’t measure up to he who came before you?’ He stretched
his arms out along the back of the sofa.

I didn’t enlighten him as to the
true nature of my concerns about Nytethorne, and was glad he hadn’t worked that
out for himself.

‘Don’t worry,’ Peredur said. ‘They
weren’t close for long. Rey, like you, thought he was being clever,
detecting
.
Then he found out the truth and realised he wasn’t clever at all.’ He smiled,
more warmly now. ‘Mossamber likes to play with your kind. He thinks you’re like
kittens chasing toys. Charming, really, but sometimes the claws do scratch and
the kittens have to be put outside for a while, where they can’t hurt anyhar,
so they learn not to scratch.’

‘I’m not here to play,’ I said.
‘As you allowed me in, do me the courtesy of finishing the story. You faked
your own death, I take it.’

The smile fell from Peredur’s
face. ‘How crude you are. If you must know, I truly intended to die, but what
lives in this land, its genius loci that has nourished me since birth, wasn’t
ready to let me go. The water spat me out. Reluctantly, I was reborn. Mossamber
had the idea that we should let the Wyvachi think I’d gone. They’d leave us
alone then, and we could deal with Vivi ourselves, keep her busy, away from
them and anyhar else.’ He pursed his lips. ‘This was not wholly successful,
obviously. She’s straining at the leash now, and power is building up that she
can feed on. I don’t know what will happen.’

‘And you’re quite content just to
let that... occur?’ I said, disgust purposefully injected into my voice.
‘You’ll let her harm Myv?’

‘Oh Ysobi,’ Peredur said, as if
with pity, ‘don’t make the mistake of thinking I’m still what I was, that
ingenuous, floppy fool. The Silver Swan, as they called me, gliding down an
endless, peaceful river. The truth is, I don’t care about anyhar beyond this
domain. They bring disasters on themselves.’

‘If you really think that, why
have you and Mossamber worked to contain Vivi all these years?’

‘Didn’t you listen to what I
said? It’s not just her who has to be contained. She’s simply a part of it, as
am I. And you.’

‘And me...?’

‘Yes. You have made it so.’

‘But what is
it,
in plain
terms.’

Peredur sighed impatiently. ‘I
thought you knew. It is the
ysbryd drwg
, in the old language, an egregore
of the past, created and moulded by those who suffered and died, and those who
fuelled it thereafter. Tragedy goes back a long way in these valleys. The land
as it is now, free of humanity, flexes its muscles, releases old memories. As I
said, we’re all part of it.’

I drew in a breath. ‘Right, so
let me get things straight.’ I marked off my points on my fingers. ‘There is a malign
egregore and you
are
partly responsible for it. You say you contain it,
yet you haven’t done anything meaningful to actually stop it, even after all
these years. Is there something about it that amuses you? Is it revenge,
resentment, what?’

Peredur grimaced. ‘It’s just the
way things are, a stage we set almost a century ago. The Wyvachi are as responsible
for it as I am.’

‘So you’re saying both sides are
prepared to allow Myv to be sacrificed on the altar of this poisonous belief?’

Peredur slapped the sofa with
one hand. ‘Keep up, Ysobi! It’s not a case of what we can allow. None of us
control it, not even Vivi. It’s in the soil, the sap, the waters. Hundreds of
human voices crying out, hundreds of hara. Did you know that the Wyvachi and
the Whitemanes, under Commander Malakess’s instructions, razed several phyles
around here they thought
unsuitable
for this land’s future?’

My face must have expressed my
shock, and it was clear Peredur didn’t have to wait for words to illustrate my
feelings.

‘Quite. You didn’t know. Even in
Wyva’s early days there were still occasional purges. Nohar speaks of
that
,
of course. They wring their hands and pull on their hair and weep about curses
and terrible burdens. Perhaps they wanted the curse, in order to appease their guilt.’
He shrugged. ‘It’s a wormy mess, isn’t it? And so inconvenient now we’re
established and civilised.’

 ‘So Medoc was right,’ I said.
‘He’s worked out a lot of it for himself.’

There was a silence that again informed
me Peredur didn’t know
everything
, not for example that I’d visited his
brother.

‘So how is it you have the
ability to contain this force yet can’t dispel it?’ I asked.

Peredur made an insouciant
gesture. ‘I’m alive
simply
to contain it. Hadn’t you thought of that?’

‘And yet you say you don’t
care...’

He sighed, somewhat irritably. ‘All
right, it’s a nuisance. I wish it was gone. Mossamber
does
care, especially
about the harling, although he’d rather die than let Wyva know that. Myv is the
first harling to be born to that house since Wyva and his brothers. And now
he’s nearly at his feybraiha, his potential.’

‘And events are building towards
a climax,’ I said. ‘What will happen exactly? Do you know?’

Peredur nodded. ‘At Reaptide,
Verdiferel will be unleashed, and he is the guardian of the land at that time.
He will inevitably merge with the egregore, the
ysbryd drwg
, and
together they will bring a purge. None shall emerge unscathed.’

‘So in some ways, this year Verdiferel
will be a manifestation of every etheric force lurking about?’

‘You could put it like that. We
can go for years – decades even – when things are quiet and it’s easy to
maintain balance in the land, but times are changing. Myvyen har Wyvachi is
reaching maturity. You must feel dark energy building up around you. I smell it
everywhere. I can taste it in the air, hear its breath. It threatens all of us,
not just the Wyvachi, though it’s doubtful they will survive it.’

I felt as if pieces I’d been
missing from my puzzle were falling into place. I’d sensed and guessed so much,
but now I sat before the oracle, who knew far more than I did, who confirmed my
intuitions. But oracles could be tricky. I must proceed carefully. ‘I see. So how
does Mossamber intend to protect his family from this
purge
? You must’ve
discussed it, surely?’

‘Yes... We’ve discussed
you
,
as it happens.’

I raised my brows at him. ‘Oh,
really? Why, if you’ve only summoned me here to warn me off?’

Peredur laughed coldly. ‘I
wanted to hear what you’d say.’ He leaned towards me a little.

‘Wait...’ A light went on in my
head. ‘Rey... me... All this time, perhaps with hienamas before us, Mossamber
has been trying to find a solution, hasn’t he?’

Peredur shrugged, a slight smile
on his face. ‘Yes, I suppose he has – not that it did any good. Nytethorne has particular
faith in you, although I did tell Mossamber it’s unwise to trust the judgement
of the besotted.’

‘I agree, yet here I am.’

He nodded. ‘Yes. There is a
strong flavour to you, I can taste that. So...’ He paused. ‘As I said, there
are cycles. We’ve experienced... risings... before. My brother Kinnard was the
casualty of one of them.’